As a condition of voting, should people be required to demonstrate Essay

As a condition of voting, should people be required to demonstrate that they have an adequate understanding of how the American government works Why or Why not - Essay Example Voting is a high stalk game because wrong voting can lead to unjust wars, calamitous economic policies and needless wars. That is why voters should make the right decision while voting based on sound evidence that will lead to best policing and promote the common good rather than on self-interest. Voting is not a duty for everyone because some people vote based on their self-interest, while others are politically incompetent, and others are ignorant. If this kind of people votes then they owe it to the other citizens both voters and no-voters. There is nothing wrong by being ignorant in politics, misinformed or coming up with particular political belief so long as you do not impose your views on people by voting (Brennan, 2012). Research done indicate that most America voters are clueless on issues concerning political. If asked question on political, for instance, if they prefer diplomacy to military action in solving international conflict. Most lack ideas on what to say; others tend to refer to what they hard on television. If asked why they prefer one candidate to the others, they answer ignorantly and just say that they just like the way that person talks. If an individual cannot discuss rationally on foreign issues, name the staple of liberal ideology, or change their thoughts in response to information they are not able to remember. Then that people is better if he does not vote. Most voters vote based on partisan voting, which in most cases they inherit from their parents. Those who vote genuinely based on of facts are very few. Survey done in the 2000 and 2004 elections suggest that most voters behave politically just like voter of the 1950s. However, some scholars think that their colleagues have set the bar high of what is expected of the voters. Voting is an ethical issue and how we vote matters a lot. In our voting, we can create a better government or a worse one and

Compare the short story Flowers for Algernon Essay Example for Free

Compare the short story Flowers for Algernon Essay The differences between Flowers for Algernon as a short story and as a movie represent the differences between the two media. In my essay I am going to show, from the differences between the short story and the movie, the differences between the two media, coming up with the conclusion that the short story is the better medium by which to tell this story. One of the most significant differences between the short story and the movie is the developing of Charlies character in the story. In the book for example, is nothing said about his family, whereas in the movie is told a lot about his childhood and in the end he also sees his mother. When we see Charlie in the movie identifying himself as lonely, he becomes a more described character than he is in the book. This shows the difference that in a short story we have to develop a character ourselves, but in a movie only throughout one picture of a person we already get a description of this character we would never have got in a short story. In the movie we have seen the information about Charlie we immediately get it supported by information about his family. There are also different kinds of pathos in short story and movie. With the identification of Charlie Ms Kinnian and indirectly Algernon with the loneliness in the movie, they identify themselves as sad. This makes the movie much more pathetic than the short story, because in the short story only the identifying between Charlie and Algernon takes place, which is much less pathetic. What also support the pathos in the movie is the whole emotion around the relationship between Charlie and Ms Kinnian. This could represent the fact that a movie has to be more emotional than a short story, so that the people want to see it. But it could also show that someone who is making a movie has to bring in more pathos in his story, because he shows the story omniscient. That means he has not the chance to tell the story in diary-form and so directly out of the brain of the main character which is much more personal. With short story as diary-form you can see everything through the eyes of the diary writer. To compare the roles of the doctors, doing the operation, also brings up a big difference. In the movie there is no Dr. Nemur, who plays a big role in  the short story. In the short story Dr. Nemur represents the scientific world, which is not always human. Dr. Strauss plays the good, personal and human guy, which also cares about Charlies feelings and his psychology. Now in the movie there is only Dr. Strauss, who then has to represent the scientific world but also has to be the good guy. So two flat characters from the short story can be put into one character in the movie. Because Dr. Strauss is representing two characters, he becomes a grotesque person. This happens, because he has to represent a scientific society, which does not have ethics as basis but also has to represent a world of humanity and ethics, which in the short story represent Dr. Nemur. In my opinion the short story is the more successful medium by which to tell the story, because the movie creates you through a lot of emotions one specific opinion about what happens to Charlie. Whereas in the short story you have more chance to create your own opinion about the story, which is a very important thing in stories but also in your life.

Free Essays - The Controlling Men of The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays

The Controlling Men of The Awakening In The Awakening, the male characters attempt to exert control over the character of Edna. None of the men understand her need for independence. Edna thinks she will find true love with Robert but realizes that he will never understand her needs to be an independent woman. Edna's father and husband control her and they feel she has a specific duty as a woman. Alcee Arobin, also attempts to control Edna in his own way. Edna knows she wants freedom. She realizes this at the beginning of the book. "Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her (Pg. 642). Throughout The Awakening she is trying to gain that independence that she wants so bad. The Colonel, Edna's father, is very strict. He thinks very highly of discipline. At the end of The Awakening, Edna feels the struggle she has with her father. "Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's" (Pg 723). At this moment, Edna wants freedom. She wants freedom from the life that has her trapped to be someone she isn't. The Colonel thought that Mr. Pontellier should be more controlling over Edna. "You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce. Authority and coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it" (Pg. 688). Edna does everything around the house when the Colonel comes to visit because she doesn't want him to think she isn't playing her role as a woman in the family. "She would not permit a servant or one of the children to do anything for him which she might do herself" (Pg. 687). Leonce Pontellier believes women should live only for their families' well-being. "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business" (Pg. 637). Mr. Pontellier never thinks for a minute that it is also his responsibility to take care of the children. Free Essays - The Controlling Men of The Awakening :: Chopin Awakening Essays The Controlling Men of The Awakening In The Awakening, the male characters attempt to exert control over the character of Edna. None of the men understand her need for independence. Edna thinks she will find true love with Robert but realizes that he will never understand her needs to be an independent woman. Edna's father and husband control her and they feel she has a specific duty as a woman. Alcee Arobin, also attempts to control Edna in his own way. Edna knows she wants freedom. She realizes this at the beginning of the book. "Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her (Pg. 642). Throughout The Awakening she is trying to gain that independence that she wants so bad. The Colonel, Edna's father, is very strict. He thinks very highly of discipline. At the end of The Awakening, Edna feels the struggle she has with her father. "Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's" (Pg 723). At this moment, Edna wants freedom. She wants freedom from the life that has her trapped to be someone she isn't. The Colonel thought that Mr. Pontellier should be more controlling over Edna. "You are too lenient, too lenient by far, Leonce. Authority and coercion are what is needed. Put your foot down good and hard; the only way to manage a wife. Take my word for it" (Pg. 688). Edna does everything around the house when the Colonel comes to visit because she doesn't want him to think she isn't playing her role as a woman in the family. "She would not permit a servant or one of the children to do anything for him which she might do herself" (Pg. 687). Leonce Pontellier believes women should live only for their families' well-being. "He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children. If it was not a mother's place to look after children, whose on earth was it? He himself had his hands full with his brokerage business" (Pg. 637). Mr. Pontellier never thinks for a minute that it is also his responsibility to take care of the children.

How Justified Were President Lincoln’s Wartime Decisions? Essay

How Justified Were President Lincoln’s Wartime Decisions? In a time of war, it is necessary for the President to enforce limits on the power of individuals. President Lincoln was entirely justified in limiting rights during the wartime situation to protect the nation. It was also necessary for him to increase the size of the federal army in order for the North to have any possibility of winning the war. Lincoln had to do all that he could to keep the Border States, each of which the Union could not afford to lose. Setting limits on the rights of individuals was unavoidable for President Lincoln, because Copperheads posed a significant threat to the Union. It is almost certain that the North would have lost the war if Lincoln did not improve the Union’s army. The South had superior military trained personnel because most of the U.S. military that had been professionally trained seceded with the South. A number of notable military institutions were located in the South. The North only had a small â€Å"standing army† before the war. Congress was not in session at the time of crisis, so Lincoln himself requested 75, 000 men, most of which had never even held a gun. This large army needed training and supplies. Had Lincoln waited for the $2 million needed for military services to be appropriated, it may have been too late to successfully train such a large army. It was crucial that the Union did not lose any of the Border States. Martial Law had to be ordered in ...

Reflecting on self an an entrepreuner

Introduction The first half of this report is written about one of the famous German entrepreneurs Klaus KobJoll. It will include personal, societal and environmental antecedent that influenced KobJolls' decisions during his life. In addition, his strengths and weaknesses will be determined and compared against my own ones. Second half of report will describe on what kind of venture I will do my Opportunity Analyses Report. It will include 5 key disciplines and 2 key personnel required to be source, as well as skills and competences needed for the start-up of the venture Background Information on Klaus KobJollBeing born on 13 June 1948, Klaus KobJoll is now one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Europe (Schindlerhof n. d. ). His business portfolio ranges from restaurants to hotel business. His entrepreneurial career began when he was 22 by opening a â€Å"Creperie rennaise† restaurant in Erlangen in 1970. From then on, he established several more restaurants and hotels in Erlangen and Nuremberg. 1 1984, he opened the most successful venture in his career, the â€Å"Landhotel Schindlerhof†. Schindlerhof has become one of the best hotels in Europe and won several awards.Klaus KobJoll himself sees business as something that is very personal and should be handled with care. He is the author of books, lectures, and articles on hotel management (CSA Celebrity Speakers n. d. ). In what ways Klaus KobJoll can be considered an entrepreneur? KobJoll is believed to be highly successful and rare entrepreneur. He deserved that status through his hard work and dedication to his ventures. The rigidly high standards that Klaus imposed on himself for running his business, earned him recognition and numerous accolades.Moreover, his unique way of dealing with mployees, giving them as much empowerment as they need to learn being independent, made his company one of the Germanys most productive places. His desire to grow and make Schindlerhof a better place broug ht the expansion of an originally 19-room hotel into a nearly 100-room hotel with $7mln turnover in 2012 (Wildberg, R 2013). He is also a member of German Hotel and restaurant Association and became first full member of the Swiss Hotelier's Association (CSA Celebrity Speakers n. d. ).Personal Influences of Klaus KobJoll The establishment of entrepreneurship is highly influenced by individual's personal raits and characteristics (Morrison, A, Rimmington, M ; Williams, C 1999). From that point of view, Timmons (cited in Morrison, A et al. 1999) suggests that leadership, along with commitment and determination are among desirable traits for an entrepreneur to possess. It can be seen that Klaus KobJoll is truly is an inspirational and motivational leader. He prompts his employees to be independent by empowering them to discover their individual talents.Klaus KobJoll sees his hotel â€Å"as a school in which they grow' (Wildberg, R 2013). In addition, being a leader Klaus KobJoll admits that every leader has a select group of qualities. He states that every man can be a manager, but not everyone can become a leader. He highlights several points such as self-confidence, need for achievement, and responsiveness to Those factors in turn correspond with entrepreneurial traits suggested by Schumpeter, McClelland, Baty and Chet et al. (cited in Morrison, A et al. 1999).

Dwight Eisenhower Fast Facts

Dwight Eisenhower Fast Facts Dwight Eisenhower (1890 - 1969) was elected to the White House in 1952. He had served as the Supreme Allied Commander during World War II and was a hugely popular figure in the United States. He was able to carry 83% of the electoral vote. Ironically, he never saw active combat despite his many years in the military.   Following is a list of fast facts for Dwight Eisenhower.  For more in depth information, you can also read the Dwight Eisenhower Biography. Birth: October 14, 1890 Death: March 28, 1969 Term of Office: January 20, 1953 - January 20, 1961 Number of Terms Elected: 2 Terms First Lady: Marie Mamie Geneva Doud Chart of the First Ladies Dwight Eisenhower Quote: No people can live to itself alone. The unity of all who dwell in freedom is their own sure. ~Second Inaugural AddressAdditional Dwight Eisenhower Quotes Major Events While in Office: End of the Korean War (1953) Brown v. Board of Education (1954) Interstate Highway System Created (1956)Eisenhower ordered Federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce integration (1957)Eisenhower Doctrine (1957) States Entering Union While in Office: Alaska (1959)Hawaii (1959) Related Dwight Eisenhower Resources: These additional resources on Dwight Eisenhower can provide you with further information about the president and his times. Dwight Eisenhower BiographyWant a more detailed look at Dwight Eisenhowers life from his childhood through his time as president? This biography provides detailed information to help you gain a better understanding of the man and his administration. Overview of World War IIWorld War II was the war to end aggression by ruthless dictators. The allies fought for humane treatment of all people. This war is characterized by extremes. People remember the heroes with fondness and the perpetrators of the Holocaust with hatred. Brown v. Board of EducationThis court case overturned the doctrine of Separate but Equal that had been allowed with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896. Korean ConflictThe war in Korea lasted from 1950-1953. It has been called the forgotten war because of its placement between the glory of World War II and the agony caused by the Vietnam War. Chart of Presidents and Vice PresidentsThis informative chart gives quick reference information on the presidents, vice-presidents, their terms of office, and their political parties. Other Presidential Fast Facts: Harry TrumanJohn F. KennedyList of American Presidents

Neolithic Art and the New Stone Age

Neolithic Art and the New Stone Age After the art of the Mesolithic era, art in the Neolithic age (literally new stone) represents a spree of  innovation. Humans were settling themselves down into agrarian societies, which left them enough spare time to explore some key concepts of civilization- namely, religion, measurement, the rudiments of architecture, and writing and art. Climactic Stability The big geological news of the Neolithic age was that the glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere concluded their long, slow retreat, thus freeing up a lot of real estate and stabilizing the climate. For the first time, humans living everywhere from the sub-tropics to the Northern tundra could count on crops that appeared on schedule, and seasons that could be reliably tracked. This newfound  climatic stability was the one factor that allowed many tribes to abandon their wandering ways and begin to construct more-or-less permanent villages. No longer dependent, since the end of the Mesolithic era, on herd migration for food supplies, peoples of the Neolithic were becoming adept at refining farming techniques and building up domesticated herds of their own animals. With an ever-increasing, steady supply of grain and meat, we humans now had time to ponder the Big Picture and invent some  radical technological advances. Types of Neolithic Art The new arts to emerge from this era were weaving, architecture, megaliths, and increasingly stylized pictographs that were well on their way to becoming writing. The earlier arts of statuary, painting, and pottery stuck (and still remain) with us. The Neolithic era saw many refinements to each. Statuary (primarily statuettes), made a big comeback after having been largely absent during the Mesolithic age. Its Neolithic theme dwelt primarily on the female/fertility, or Mother Goddess imagery (quite in keeping with agriculture). There were still animal statuettes, however, these werent lavished with the detail the goddesses enjoyed. They are often found broken into bits- perhaps indicating that they were used symbolically in hunting rituals. Additionally, sculpture was no longer created strictly by carving. In the Near East, in particular, figurines were now fashioned out of clay and baked. Archaeological digs at Jericho turned up a marvelous human skull (c. 7,000 BC) overlaid with delicate, sculpted plaster features. Painting, in Western Europe and the Near East, left the caves and cliffs for good and became a purely decorative element. The finds of Çatal Hà ¼yà ¼k, an ancient village in modern Turkey, show lovely wall paintings (including the worlds earliest known landscape), dating from c. 6150 BC. As for pottery, it began replacing stone and wood utensils at a rapid pace and also become more highly decorated. Art for Ornamentation Neolithic art was still- almost without exception- created for some functional purpose. There were more images of humans than animals, and the humans looked more identifiably human. It began to be used for ornamentation. In the cases of architecture and megalithic constructions, art was now created in fixed locations. This was significant. Where temples, sanctuaries and stone rings were built, gods and goddesses were provided with known destinations. Additionally, the emergence of tombs provided unmoving resting places for the dearly departed that could be visited- another first. Neolithic Art Around the World At this point, art history typically begins to follow a prescribed course: Iron and bronze are discovered. Ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt arise, make art, and are followed by art in the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome. People then traveled to and settled in what is now Europe for the next thousand years, eventually moving on to the New World- which subsequently shares artistic honors with Europe. This route is commonly known as Western Art, and is often the focus of any art history/art appreciation syllabus. However, the sort of art that has been described in this article as Neolithic (i.e.: Stone age; that of pre-literate peoples who hadnt yet discovered how to smelt metals) continued to flourish in the Americas, Africa, Australia and, in particular, Oceania. In some instances, it was still thriving in the previous (20th) century.

Freedoms Obligations essays

Freedom's Obligations essays For many, the concept of freedom is a mere given, like food or shelter. We reap its benefits without giving much thought; but when it is taken away from us, we come to the realization that while many of us were born and granted an emancipating and intangible gift, this freedom sits upon conditions that we must acknowledge and act on to maintain our rights. Voting is virtually the only obligation the United States government expects from citizens in return for freedom. In the big picture, voting does not seem like an unreasonable request in return for freedom, but a majority of adult citizens do not take even a few minutes to use their freedom for the good of the country. We live in a country, which in its adolescent years, fought long and hard to define itself as a nation based on freedoms. We, as citizens, owe our lives and our servitude to this republic. Yet it seems that the more advanced American society becomes, the further away we wander from the nation our founding fathers once envisioned. With every election we move closer to a unitary form of control in which people have no say in their government. In more than eighty years, the American voter turnout has yet to reach even sixty-five percent. In the year 2000, only fifty-one percent of registered voters took a trip to the polls for the presidential election. What does this tell us? That America is full of lazy bums? Not exactly. This tells us that we, as citizens, dont truly understand the importance of voting. The right to vote is a large part of what makes our society unique. Voting is not just about casting a ballot; it is about maintaining a free society. Voting is a privilege that citizens of the United States tend to take for granted. People of some foreign countries literally die for the right of a political voice; whereas we sometimes shrug it off as a political burden. Also, when we vote for president for e ...

Effortless Cooking Every Day Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Effortless Cooking Every Day - Essay Example The second step is to drain meat. During this step, the cook should reserve sieved marinating liquid and dry meat with paper towel. It is possible to use glass or ceramic plates preparing meat. During the next step, the cook adds 1 T. butter to preheated browning skillet. Then, it is important to swirl skillet to coat bottom with melted butter. The next step is to add meat and cook it uncovered 4 minutes until meat is no longer pink. This step is very important because the quality and taste of meat will determine the taste and flavor of the finished dish (Barham, 2000).  The second step is to drain meat. During this step, the cook should reserve sieved marinating liquid and dry meat with paper towel. It is possible to use glass or ceramic plates preparing meat. During the next step, the cook adds 1 T. butter to preheated browning skillet. Then, it is important to swirl skillet to coat bottom with melted butter. The next step is to add meat and cook it uncovered 4 minutes until meat is no longer pink. This step is very important because the quality and taste of meat will determine the taste and flavor of the finished dish (Barham, 2000).   The next step is to choose a bowl for rice. To prevent boil-overs, it is better to choose large enough bowls. During this step, the addition of oil to cooking water will prevent boil-overs. It is very important to cook rice in a covered dish. A small secret is that rice requires virtually no stirring during cooking. In fact, less stirring is better since over-stirring can cause a ‘mushy’ texture.   In order to add a delicious taste to the dish, the cook can add sieved marinating liquid to rice while cooking. It is important to remember that the amount of rice should be equal to the amount of water. The cook should choose a bowl twice as large as the water amount. The next step is to heat water, add salt and stir the rice. The amount of time recommended is 15 minutes, but it depends upon the quality and the a mount of rice. If you are not sure about the exact time of cooking, it is possible to cook rice the amount of time recommended on the package.

Autobiography and professional goals statement Personal

Autobiography and professional goals - Personal Statement Example I did not have a lot when I was growing up. I was born into an Afghani low-income family that struggled to provide for me. Life was a challenge every day. When I was six years old, my family moved to the neighboring country of Pakistan due to the war that had broken out in my own country. Because we left in a hurry, we did not have any possessions when we reached Pakistan. As a result, my parents could barely provide enough food to feed me and my four brothers. After a couple of years of life in Pakistan, tragedy struck. One of my younger brothers died due to severe food poisoning. The seriousness of our situation at that time led me parents to marry me off when I was 13 to someone who was twice my age. Although this may sound like a strange event, at that time in Pakistan this was a common occurrence because there were many cases of young girls being kidnapping. My parents did not want this fate to befall me, so they made a tough decision. This is added to the fact that my parents c ould not adequately provide for me, so marrying me off would actually benefit them in the long run. A couple of years after I got married I moved to the United States along with my husband. I saw this as an opportunity for my life to change for the better. However, my life became much worse due to the physical and emotional abuse that I suffered at the hands of my husband. During those first few months, I felt like a prisoner; I was not allowed to attend school or even go outside and talk to someone. I had my first child not long after this, but I still felt like a child myself. A few years later I had my second daughter while I was still only a teenager. As a result of this, I had to mature very quickly, and this maturity would help me later on in my life during difficult times. At the age of 20, I could not handle the abuse metered out by my husband, so I filed for divorce. I had a dream to go to

Early Childhood Education in UK in Comparison to Italy Essay

Early Childhood Education in UK in Comparison to Italy - Essay Example In Italy, the state has acknowledged the importance of pre-school education (preparatory school to primary education), took over the complete responsibility in 1968 with the Law no. 444. With Law no. 444, pre-school, with the passing of time by, by gaining educational value and didactical autonomy, became a part of the educational system. Currently Law no. 53 of 28 Mar 2003 and delegated decree no. 59 of 19 Feb 2004 provide for the full introduction of pre-schools in the education system. Due to the anticipated enrollment in pre-schools, all efforts are now directed to open pre-schools to children who reach three years of age. As far as primary education is concerned, in Italy, The Casti Law (1859) provided the establishment of compulsory lower primary school (including 1st and 2nd class) and higher primary school (including 3rd and 4rth class). Municipalities had to take care of this and by 1861 this establishment is extended to the whole of Italy. Currently, with the approval of Legislative Decree 59/2004, primary school education is now composed of 5-year primary school and 3-year lower secondary school education. After the approval of decree no. 59, the debates are going on how teachers are going to UK Government consists of Legislature, the Executive and the judiciary. The parliament consists of Queens, the appointed house of Lords and the elected House of Commons consisting of 659 members. Parliament passes laws, monitors government policies. The Executive cabinet consists of 20 ministers, usually ahead of government departments, appointed and chosen by Prime Minister. Before school standard and framework act 1998, Local Education Authority (LEA) gave provisions to children aged between 2 to 5 years having some Special Education Needs. The 1998 Act imposed a duty on LEA to provide pre-school education in their area. By Apr 2004, LEA has provided free places for two and a half hours of pre-school five days a week to all 3-year and 4-year old children

Mangment Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Mangment - Speech or Presentation Example Secondly, it is impossible to calculate the beginning work in progress since it obtained from a previous year’s end work in progress, which is not contained in the extract provided. Lastly, since the units for measuring the direct labor cost is not provided, it is impractical to calculate the cost using the information in the manufacturing account extract (Lal & Srivastava 404-423). The estimated overhead rate allocation rate on the basis of direct labor cost = (15,000/10,000) = $ 1.5 per direct labor cost. Therefore, overhead cost to be added to job Q at the year end = (1.5*8,000) = $ 12,000 (Lal & Srivastava 404-423). The overhead allocation rate = 120% of direct labor. From this, the overhead cost of job 413 = (120/100) *8, 000 = $ 9,600. Therefore, the total manufacturing cost assigned = overhead cost + direct materials cost + direct labor cost = (9,600 + 12,000 + 8,000) = $ 29,600. The unit product cost for job 413 = total manufacturing cost/ number of units = (29,600/200) = $ 148 (Lal & Srivastava

Project Finance in the FertiNitro Company Coursework

Project Finance in the FertiNitro Company - Coursework Example Polar is a passive sponsor of FertiNitro and is not directly involved in the business of construction and operation of the fertilization plant. Polar is mainly a food and beverage company with present joint ventures in companies like Koch and Pequiven which are the major stakeholders of FertiNitro. The total revenue generated by the Polar group is the US $1.9 billion. More than 2% of the company goes to Venezuela’s non-oil GDP (Duff & Phelps, 1998, p.5). Impact of the Sponsors’ contribution on the project in terms of viability as a stand-alone project financing The strategy adopted by Polar in the investment of export projects has generated profitable returns to Venezuela. The first project to invest in Polar is FertiNitro. The indirect involvement of Polar in the project of FertiNitro has resulted in being the important mitigant to it. PDVSA gas is the subsidiary company of Polar Group which contributes to the major portion of the gas requirement of the country made available by FertiNitro. The foreign exchange over the past decades has been favorable for PDVSA which gives FertiNitro another reason to make the Polar group a part of its sponsors. The indirect participation of PDVSA in FertiNitro the foreign transfers and the risk convertibility gets minimized. PDVSA also has the leading market in urea in South America along with Pequiven which is the petrochemical wing of PDVSA. PDVSA is also responsible for offsetting the risk of the volatile market by lowering the cost of the feedstock gas supply. PDVSA is the world second largest Oil and Gas Company contributes the most to the FertiNitro as the company both directly and indirectly invests in the company. Even the internal funds of Pequiven are sponsored by PDVSA. Thus the viability of FertiNitro based on the stand-alone project financing of the Polar Group will bring about remarkable results as the company in engages in both direct and indirect financial investment for the company. Both the cost overruns and the time overruns of the company will be under check in spite of the fact that as Polar the company contributes to the 10% of sponsorship to FertiNitro and is a passive sponsor. Following aspects of the project with relevant matters Off-taker, The Polar Group has signed an offtake agreement with both Pequiven and Koch Off takers which are both joint ventures. The Koch Off taker bears the obligation of 75% of the ammonia and 43% of an area of the company that is available for sale during the year. Similarly, the rest of the obligation of the Polar Group’s off-take agreement lies with Pequiven. Certain specification of the company related to the off-taker agreement has to be abided by the mentioned companies like appointing an independent inspector regarding the approval of the off-takers who will be in charge of determining the quality of the product to be delivered. Based on the independent inspector’s assessment the rejection of the non-conforming products is made or availed at a discounted rate. At the initial level of agreement, Koch will have the rights to sell the products and delivering the same in North America while Pequiven will follow a similar act in South America, Caribbean, and Central America.  Ã‚  

Land Law Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Land Law - Case Study Example In this case study, the facts to be observed is with regard to provisions of Land Registration 2002 which was operationalised from 2003. Section 29 (1) of the Land Registration Act 2002 states, interalia, "if a registrable disposition of a registered charge is made for valuable consideration, completion of the disposition by registration has the effect of postponing to the interest under the disposition any interest affecting the charge immediately before the disposition whose priority is not protected at the time of registration." (Disposition of Registered Land. 2002). The aspects of restrictions, as is evident in this case study are found under Sections 40 and 41 of Land Registration Act 2002. Section 40 circumscribes the circumstances under which certain restrictions could be imposed with regard to mortgage and they seek to place restrictions on the making of any entries, either for a specified or unspecified period of time or depending upon the happening of any event. The law under Section 40 (2) states that "A restriction may, in particular (3) Without prejudice to generality of subsection (2)(b)(iii), the events which may be specified include- (a) the giving of notice,(b) the obtaining of consent, and (c) the making of an order by the court or registrar. (Notices and restrictions. 2002). In this case of Nicole and Silky Smooth Limited, it is seen that the following restrictions were placed by the mortgagee (lender) Silky Smooth Limited while negotiating a Registered 1st Charge on the property of Nicole, the mortgagor as pre-conditions for giving of the loans: 1. She would be the sole supplier for the Nicole's beauty product Company until year 2034. 2. There would be no repayment of the loan amount of 100,000 from the loanee, or demands from loaner for a period of 25 years. 3. The interest rate would be at 3% more than the prevailing bank rate. The effect of these registered charges now binds both the mortgagee and the mortgagor as per Section 40 of the Registration of Property Act. The aspect of "restrictive covenant "that was seen in the case of Tulk v. Moxhay 1848 and it is said that this established that the burden of a covenant which was restrictive in nature could run with the land', despite privity of contract. (Tulk v Moxhay (1848). 2006). The aspect of higher interest rate that is seen in this case study cannot be termed as unconscionable since as per the legal framework, there are no restrictions on the rate of interest that may be charged on mortgages, and in the absence of disagreement or protest on the party of the mortgagor regarding higher interest rates, there is a valid agreement. (Are there limits on the interest rate that can be charged: (How to know your rights and obligations as mortgagee (lender) 2006). Thus it could be seen that as per Section 40 of the Registration of Property Act, once the restrictions have been registered as charge, as is evident in this case, it should be enforceable on the parties and except,

Mangment Speech or Presentation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Mangment - Speech or Presentation Example Secondly, it is impossible to calculate the beginning work in progress since it obtained from a previous year’s end work in progress, which is not contained in the extract provided. Lastly, since the units for measuring the direct labor cost is not provided, it is impractical to calculate the cost using the information in the manufacturing account extract (Lal & Srivastava 404-423). The estimated overhead rate allocation rate on the basis of direct labor cost = (15,000/10,000) = $ 1.5 per direct labor cost. Therefore, overhead cost to be added to job Q at the year end = (1.5*8,000) = $ 12,000 (Lal & Srivastava 404-423). The overhead allocation rate = 120% of direct labor. From this, the overhead cost of job 413 = (120/100) *8, 000 = $ 9,600. Therefore, the total manufacturing cost assigned = overhead cost + direct materials cost + direct labor cost = (9,600 + 12,000 + 8,000) = $ 29,600. The unit product cost for job 413 = total manufacturing cost/ number of units = (29,600/200) = $ 148 (Lal & Srivastava

Land Law Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Land Law - Case Study Example In this case study, the facts to be observed is with regard to provisions of Land Registration 2002 which was operationalised from 2003. Section 29 (1) of the Land Registration Act 2002 states, interalia, "if a registrable disposition of a registered charge is made for valuable consideration, completion of the disposition by registration has the effect of postponing to the interest under the disposition any interest affecting the charge immediately before the disposition whose priority is not protected at the time of registration." (Disposition of Registered Land. 2002). The aspects of restrictions, as is evident in this case study are found under Sections 40 and 41 of Land Registration Act 2002. Section 40 circumscribes the circumstances under which certain restrictions could be imposed with regard to mortgage and they seek to place restrictions on the making of any entries, either for a specified or unspecified period of time or depending upon the happening of any event. The law under Section 40 (2) states that "A restriction may, in particular (3) Without prejudice to generality of subsection (2)(b)(iii), the events which may be specified include- (a) the giving of notice,(b) the obtaining of consent, and (c) the making of an order by the court or registrar. (Notices and restrictions. 2002). In this case of Nicole and Silky Smooth Limited, it is seen that the following restrictions were placed by the mortgagee (lender) Silky Smooth Limited while negotiating a Registered 1st Charge on the property of Nicole, the mortgagor as pre-conditions for giving of the loans: 1. She would be the sole supplier for the Nicole's beauty product Company until year 2034. 2. There would be no repayment of the loan amount of 100,000 from the loanee, or demands from loaner for a period of 25 years. 3. The interest rate would be at 3% more than the prevailing bank rate. The effect of these registered charges now binds both the mortgagee and the mortgagor as per Section 40 of the Registration of Property Act. The aspect of "restrictive covenant "that was seen in the case of Tulk v. Moxhay 1848 and it is said that this established that the burden of a covenant which was restrictive in nature could run with the land', despite privity of contract. (Tulk v Moxhay (1848). 2006). The aspect of higher interest rate that is seen in this case study cannot be termed as unconscionable since as per the legal framework, there are no restrictions on the rate of interest that may be charged on mortgages, and in the absence of disagreement or protest on the party of the mortgagor regarding higher interest rates, there is a valid agreement. (Are there limits on the interest rate that can be charged: (How to know your rights and obligations as mortgagee (lender) 2006). Thus it could be seen that as per Section 40 of the Registration of Property Act, once the restrictions have been registered as charge, as is evident in this case, it should be enforceable on the parties and except,

Effects of technology Essay Example for Free

Effects of technology Essay Technology is the specific scope of idea in which it reflects the overall application of knowledge towards the development of society (Bilton, 2007). In this aspect, greater improvements in the people’s way of life are the considerations involved in order to measure the effect of technology. Today, computers are among the most influential products of technology that have already changed the way people do their tasks. To evaluate the scale of such change, the realization that almost everything on this planet runs with the help of computers is a good aspect to consider. The most essential goal in fabricating computers was to help in the data process techniques to simplify the task of using them for everyday life. Since its inception in the middle of the 20th century, the social structures of the world population has already changed. The integration of computers to almost every type of tasks has made it much easier for people to complete responsibilities that would otherwise require enormous effort and time resources. An example on how computers have changed the society may be seen in the aspect of communications. Previously, the terms like internet, chat and video conferencing have no meaning. However, today’s computer technology has provided the essential convenience of communicating with another person from across any parts of the globe. A simple click on a web browser and sending an electronic letter is very much possible. It has provided greater channels for communications in a way that ease of use is not compromised. One more feature of computers, which modified the way society does things, is their capability of integrating with almost any other pre-existing devices. Today, television sets, cameras, bank machines, grocery scanners and vehicles are using devices that were primarily fabricated with the use of computers. Because of its capability to run tests for data management, it has been very easy for product manufacturers to see opportunities for technical improvements. Computers are now considered the basic platform that enables newer devices to run. Integrated circuits in all electronic devices are utilizing he same scope of computer based technology (Wikipedia, 2007). Lastly, computers are becoming the â€Å"multiplier† devices in which other patterned ideas will be introduced. Because of the scale of presence computers has in today’s society, a simple modification procedure to improve a product or service can cause greater developments for other segments of the public. Just like what happened in the business sector wherein almost all financial transactions are now done electronically. From a simple idea of using computers as a mean to collect money figures, it has developed into aspects no one has ever imagined before; internet banking, fund transfer-monitoring, calculations of stocks and online purchasing are no all possible with computer technology. Realizing the effect of technology in the lives of the people permits the society to consider developing more opportunities. With the significant social changes brought about by computer technology, people have been equipped to face the challenges of the future.

Role of Media in Society

Role of Media in Society Media is considered to be the 4th pillar of the society while the other three being legislative, executive and judiciary. It plays an important role in the welfare of the society, working as an informer, an educator, a form of entertainment and an opinion influencer. In Malaysia, media and politics are co-dependent because through this, democracy is formed. Mustafa (1999) stated that in this broad context of democracy, the mass media plays an important role by supplying media users with a platform to obtain information, exchange views and at the same time give feedback to the government; however this is overshadowed by the states official view that the media should be functioning as an essential tool to promote national development, national harmony and national security. The Mainstream Media and Politics The Malaysian mainstream press can be categorised as having gone through a major period of change since the early 1980s in terms of ownership and well as flourished amendments and policies that serves as a form of gate-keeping and control over the media. All forms of media introduced, newspaper, radio and television, directly went under the control of the government or companies that were aligned with the government. In Malaysia, obtaining information is often a tedious affair and can be frustrating applied not just for journalists but for the public because there are no Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. One of the events that aided towards a tight control over the mainstream media was during the 1969 elections, Barisan National while retaining a majority, lost many seats to extremist Chinese and Malay parties Yesudhasan Wong (2010) stated that Malaysia experienced one of the worst incident of ethnic violence in its history that came to be known as the May 13 incident. As part of the governments plan to sustain social order then, the government suspended the publications for all newspapers for two days starting from 16 May 1969, subsequently introduced a censorship law and banned the circulation of certain foreign magazines and newspapers that contained reports of the violence in Kuala Lumpur (Mustafa, 1999) Due to the incident, the government declared to have the rights to censor items that were deemed dangerous to national security. The Malaysian government appears to be misusing arguments of religious sensitive and cultural issues to manipulate the political system by limiting political freedom of the opposition and civil society which makes Malaysia a less democratic state (Azizuddin, 2008) Then, a new established body, the National Operations Council (NOC) was formed to resuscitate parliamentary democracy, rebuild public confidence and engender ethic harmony and a form contributing towards forming ethic harmony; an amendment was form whereby it prohibited any act, speech or publication that has a tendency to bring feelings of ill-will and enmity between the various ethnic groups (Zaharom, 1999) Thus the strong hold over the mainstream media begins. Many government leaders in the developing world justify their control over the media in terms of jealousy guarding and guiding its members towards the supposedly noble path of national development and to ensure that the media does not fall into the wrong hands or in other words, state control over the mainstream media has clearly been justified in the name of national development and national security (Mustafa, 2004) During elections, the media plays an important role in publicizing as well as plays a part in advertising politicians as well as their campaign. The mainstream media is fully controlled by Barisan Nationals needs to not only publicise but as Mustafa (2005) stated, flaunt to the whole country BNs achievements, particularly in the area of socioeconomic development. A wide coverage would done on the pro-government and minimal reporting would be done on the opposition. Media ownership generally plays in role in why Barisan national is constantly being flaunt and portrayed as the political party to vote for. After Malaysia gained independence in 1957, the mainstream print media was owned by private sector companies. Then the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) made a successful bid for the Utusan Melayu a few years afterwards. Over the years, the major English newspaper, The New Straits Times was also taken over by UMNO of the ruling National Front, while The Star was bought over by the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) and mainstream television channels like TV1, TV2 and TV3 were born, controlled by the government. According to an analysis on the coverage of Malaysias 2004 general elections by four mainstream newspapers (The Star, the New Straits Times (NST), Berita Harian and Utusan Melayu), the total number of news items that were positive towards BN among all four major newspapers were roughly 40% and above. The other part of the percentage went straight to new items that were negative towards the opposition. Only a slight number of news (4% and below) were negative new items towards BN. Mustafa (2005) also highlighted sample of headlines used by these newspapers that gave an idea of slant news reporting; Malaysians prefer Pak Lahs vision of Islam (NST, March 15 2004), Perlis merana jika pilih pembangang (Perlis suffers if opposition is voted) (Utusan Melayu, March 16 2004 ) This shows a high level of bias coverage within the highly influential mainstream newspapers during the 2004 general elections. Alternative Media and Politics With an obvious slant reporting and biasness from the mainstream media, cyber news is slowly taking over, becoming a more focused, better written, more informative and alternative to the mainstream newspapers and media. Like in the case of Marina Mahathir with The Column that wasnt; this piece was spiked by the Star because it touched in issues that were sensitive but since The Malaysian Multimedia and Communication Acts of 1998 promises that No censorship would be applied on Internet content, Marina published her column online together with ranting on why her column was spiked. What would stop the public now from reading that column online and have the same reaction if it was published in the mainstream newspaper? A study conducted by Zentrum Future Studies Malaysia in 2008 involving 1, 500 respondents between the age of 21 and 40 showed that the alternative media holds a big influence on young Malaysians. In the study, 64.5% of those ages from 21 to 30 years old trusted blogs and online media for reliable information. Those between 31 and 40 years old, 61.7% believed that information in blogs and online media are true. (Study Shows Why BN Lost the War, 2008) Yesudhasan Wong (2010) said that the young readership in Malaysia believes that the mainstream media are under the control of the government, always working continuously to ensure that the news are pro-government and has no or limited reports on sensitive issues. Various alternative news portals such as Malaysia Today, Malaysian Insider, Harakah Daily and MalaysiaKini provide media users with the alternative source to obtain political news or for those who have generally lost faith with the mainstream media. The parliamentary elections in 2008 brought the alternative media to a different level when weblogs, text messages and copies of Internet-streamed videos became the most influential information sources for voters ahead that resulted in a surprise blow to the Barisan National (BN) party, which has ruled the country for more than 50 years. After BNs worst election showing, in which it lost its two-thirds majority in the parliament, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi acknowledged March 25 that his coalition certainly lost the Internet war, and added that it was a serious misjudgement for his party to rely solely on government-controlled newspapers and television in its efforts to attract voters, (Kaufman, 2008). The alternative media gave media users a chance to hear what opposition parties have to say as it is not controlled by the government. Due to this, the government realize that the new media or alternative media is an important impartation in the political scene. Now, politicians are looking into the internet to gain communicate and display information to the mass society of internet users. Parti Keadilan Rakyat, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is in the blogspere at www.anwaribrahim.com, with regular updates on PKR as well as him opinions on what Malaysian the government should be doing. SMS is also another form of alternative media, in fact; it is a rather powerful form of communication tool if used wisely. Generally, there has been a passive use of SMS for politicians to pass on messages as well as information to voters from a national voter database, as well a more interactive use of it for politicians to communicate with party representatives, voters or the media (Kaur and Halimahton, 2004) A research done by Kaur and Halimahton (2004) analysed contents of several election-related SMS for the 2004 general election sent from the nomination date until a few days after the election ended that were being sent among 238 respondents. This number was the final sample for the pilot study. According to research, 51 general election-related messages sent by friends, colleagues, family members, political party members and NGOs were collected between nomination day, 13 March 2004, and polling day, 21 March 2004. Only one message could categorized as informative, provided by communication provider MAXIS, informing voters that they should check their voting status and voting location through SMS. Only a few proved to be informative and useful in helping voters with information on the general election. 19 out of 50 were shown to be ridiculing or condemning messages towards Barisan National. 60.5% of the respondents found the election-related messages to be useful and informative. 27% found the messages to be funny where as about 6% found the messages to be a nuisance. Thought most found the SMS to be useful and informative, only 31.9% were influenced to support a party of individual base on what they received. Data collected showed that the public primarily uses SMS to for jokes or to criticize certain candidates or political parties, no serious discussion was found among the sample of SMS messages to persuade voters to vote in a certain way. Another form of alternative media, Al-Jazera English (AJE) believes in their mission to provide voice to the voiceless. In a survey done by AJE on how AJE is perceived by participants, the respondents of the survey gave a ranking of more positive than negative, showing the respondents had a favourable perception of AJE with regard to how it performed the conciliatory media functions (Mohammed and Power, 2010) Among the points that participants agreed on was that AJE provided a public place for politically underrepresented groups, AJE provides multiple view points on a diversity of controversial issues and that AJE represents the interests of the international public in general rather than a specific group of people. During the protest that broke out in November 10, 2007 organized by BERSIH with the aim of reforming the electoral process, up to an estimated of 40,000 protestors came with force to draw attention from the government. What began as a peaceful protest, the Malaysian police tried to vanquish protestors with tear gas and fire hoses. The image of such going ons were shocking and while, the mainstream broadcast and print failed to cover the protests but obtain minimal coverage, AJE covered the whole thing live and in detail (Mohammed and Power, 2010) The coverage done by AJE was then placed online, on YouTube, receiving more than 250,000 viewers within the first week of the protest resulting in a largely stated influenced media resulted in the Malaysian mainstream medias largest credibility crisis to date (Mohammed and Power, 2010) Media, Politics and the Public Sphere The role of the media is to act as a safety valve to release any pent-up emotions on any issue or combination of issues facing our country; with the heavy ownership by government, the credibility and reliability of our mainstream media might die out one day. The media also acts as a public sphere that is critically important for modern societies as it serves as a forum whereby the public can communicate collectively on relevant issues as well as allowing citizens to inform or update themselves on societal developments to observe and control political, economic and other elites (Gerhards and Schafer, 2010) However, due to the hold back and tight gate-keeping from the mainstream media, Mustafa (2005) stated that the public sphere in Malaysian society has been further constrained so that ordinary citizens and concerned civil have not been able to fully express their views and to directly participate in the countrys democratic process. Earlier this year, NTV7 producer resigned in protest over his companys decision to stop his talk show from commenting on the upcoming by-election at Hulu Selangor, following pressure said to have emanated directly from the ruling coalition. A TV2 documentary on the controversial Bakun Dam and the forced relocation of Sarawaks natives was forced off the air, just before the Sibu parliamentary by-election took place. It is clear that open debate has little room to flourish in Malaysia, (Yeoh, 2010) Malaysiakini, an example of a alternative publication that flourished tremendously after the 2008 general elections. Steele (2009) stated that it is not the Internet that challenges the Barisan Nationals stranglehold power but it is actually the norms and values of independent journalism that have made MalaysiaKini such a threat to government authorities. This ideology of creating independent journalism with the alternative media not only changes those who work within the public sphere but also creates a democratic space for public discourse, one that the Malaysian society lacks. It not only gives voice to the voiceless but concrete prove or forms of information through video, audio and feedback tools. It shows media users sides of stories that they may not see. The seemingly mechanistic tools of fairness and balance, did you get the quote from the other side? become a means of guaranteeing that all voices will be heard (Steele, 2009) Conclusion The media plays an important role in the welfare of the society, working as an informer, an educator, a form of entertainment and an opinion influencer. With the current media ownership that poses credible threat and questions the credibility to the role of the media; media users need to consider, who to trust now? Political issues are highly dependent on the media as it is highlights what is important and is highly influential thus it works as a form to influence the political mind-set of media users. With the mainstream constantly bombarding pro-government issues towards society, media users now yearn for a different point of view, shifting to the alternative media to abstract that diverse opinion. In sight of how the media and politics are inter-wined, it is important that the opinions and comments of the public take place to form a democracy, in the words of Abraham Lincoln; for the people, by the people and of the people. Thus, the public sphere is important in the role to colle ct or obtain the voices of the public. The alternative media has already taken the role in proving that space for the public to take part in forming the countrys democracy; it is now up to the mainstream media to do the same, for a better political constitution of the country.

To Have Or Have Not :: essays research papers

To Have and Have Not Michael Lind Michael Lind wrote the article To Have and Have not about the ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor. He comments with heart and knowledge on the fact that the prosperous are increasing their wealth by taking from the poor. It sounds like and basically is the story of Robin Hood. He writes about the amount of power the wealthy have, segregated work places, the crooked political system, and tax reforms. But what amazes me the most is that he too is part of the overclass. This first hand knowledge of the system gives Lind such a strong base for his argument, and allows the reader to trust his words that much more. Over the last several years in the United States it has become more and more evident that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing. Not only is the gap growing, but the government is doing very little to stop it. Slowly the poor are being shifted away from the center of wealth and being replaced by the already wealthy. It's a shame how a few people with large cheque books can run the most powerful country in the world, and yet the general public are being redirected to think this problem is a minimal and insignificant issue. The truth is that economic and social inequalities have been growing in the United States at an alarming pace. The inequalities exist because the wealthy want to have more, and the power to obtain more; To do so people must give up their wealth and thus cause the economic gap. Not only is the United States segregated based on the upper class and lower class, it seems that prejudice is also appearing in a hidden manner. Take for example an executive building. You'll notice that everyone working there looks the same. Of course their opinions, value systems, and beliefs may differ, however they are almost always white and mainline protestant. This new and still growing oligarchy is about 20 percent of the population and is evenly spread across every state. What is even more amazing about the American oligarchy is that they pride themselves solely on their individual merit. To them its not because they were born into upper class, nor that they had the opportunity to get an education, but merle on their own IQ, virtue, and genius. Lind uses a great example of this when he says,

What are the different forms of aid given by more economically :: Economics

What are the different forms of aid given by more economically developed countries (MEDCs) to less economically developed countries (LEDCs)? Explain how useful the aid is and evaluate why some aid is more successful than other aid. What are the different forms of aid given by more economically developed countries (MEDCs) to less economically developed countries (LEDCs)? Explain how useful the aid is and evaluate why some aid is more successful than other aid. Hafiza Bhabha 11 JT =================== Aid many less developed countries (LEDCs) rely on aid. In the Oxford dictionary aid is defined as, --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Something that helps, money, food, etc. ---------------------------------------- Sent to another country to help it" ------------------------------------ Aid is not only given by countries (governments) but is also given by organisations which help a certain place or fund a certain project, such as Oxfam who helps those children in Africa. The real purpose of giving aid is to help those countries that need to develop their economy so that they can improve their standard of living and quality of living. At times giving and receiving aid is complex, as it may not benefit the country, as it could be unsuccessful. Many developing countries need aid because they may have large and increasing trade debts, unfortunately they need to borrow money from MEDCs, however, sometimes by doing this, they fall into bigger, more dangerous debts. Other issues such as earthquakes, volcanoes, etc, also lead countries to borrow more money. This aid is usually only needed for a short period of time. Short-term aid is aid, which is given immediately and is only needed for a small amount of time. This is used with natural disasters and wars etc. Long-term aid is also a different type of giving. This is more useful to a developing country as there is always money, technology and other aid coming in. The aim of this coursework is to investigate what the different types of aids are and also whether they are successful or unsuccessful. In this coursework I have used secondary information. This is basically information that has already been collected. I have researched a lot from the town library, school library, magazines, Internet and many school textbooks. There are three main categories of aid, which is given by MEDCs to LEDCs and they are: Bilateral Aid This aid is between two different countries. "Help is 'given' directly by a rich 'donor' country to the 'recipient' country" (The New Wider World- School Textbook) the reason why the word given is in quotation marks s simply because there are usually conditions attached to the aid, such as the country may not allow the other country to trade with anyone else.

My Life in College Essay

My Life in College BY arce1921 My Life I am attending this college success class due to the fact I had very poor grades in my previous semesters. I have been attending Palo Alto College for about four years now off and on of course. After four years of college I wish my GPA was more worthy to show to others. After the first semester of college I still was undecided on my major and what I wanted to do with my life. I took a liking for the arts when I was in high school. During high school I was attending an art program called Say Si (San Antonio Artistic Youth) I attend this program all through my high school years. After graduating from this program I was offered a Job in their ABC (artist building communities) program. In this program I was able to mentor children that have no art programs in their current school. We also would teach at different types of children shelters and children hospitals. I enjoy teaching very much, I was looking into teaching art in a school district. But after teaching for 4 years I think it takes a special person to teach little kids. I really don’t have the patiences for teaching 2nd and 3rd graders. I current teach but only older kids. Two semesters have passed and I lacked off on my school and I was going through a rough time in my life with my family. I picked up a second Job due to the fact my teaching Job was only two days out of the week. I started working in the learning about cars and how they work. But after awhile my school schedule did not fit into my work schedule. My boss would give me a hard time about my school life all the time. I had the craziest schedule while working with auto parts. I would go to work in the morning and go to school during my lunch break and I would also go to school after work as while. This was everyday for almost a year and six months. It was two uch for me and I had to withdraw from all my classes and it went down hill from that moment on. I current have a new Job still working with kids but its more personal. I started working for a company called Roy Maas Youth Alternative . This organization houses in children taken by cps custody and probational children. I really enjoy my current job it makes me feel great helping these kids . A lot of these kids come from broken homes and bad backgrounds . Talking to these children helped me decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. I want to pursue social work as my career. This semester is going to be my new turning point in life. I finally have no trouble with my Job or my family. This is going to be the right time for me to get my grades back up to were I want them to be at . I also will start making more time to study and less time slacking off. Teaching art will still be part of my life and hopefully I can squeeze it into my new career. tutoring department to my advantage . I never did go to tutoring in the past semesters, maybe if I took some time out to go I would have done much better in my classes. I am looking forward to keeping my education on track and not derailing off my prize which is to receive my masters in social work.

Real-Time Fraud Detection: How Stream Computing Can Help the Retail Banking Industry

Para os meus pais, porque â€Å"o valor das coisas nao esta no tempo que elas duram, mas na intensidade com que acontecem. Por isso existem momentos inesqueciveis, coisas inexplicaveis e pessoas incomparaveis† como voces! Obrigado por tudo, Filipe Abstract The Retail Banking Industry has been severely affected by fraud over the past few years. Indeed, despite all the research and systems available, fraudsters have been able to outsmart and deceive the banks and their customers. With this in mind, we intend to introduce a novel and multi-purpose technology known as Stream Computing, as the basis for a Fraud Detection solution.Indeed, we believe that this architecture will stimulate research, and more importantly organizations, to invest in Analytics and Statistical Fraud-Scoring to be used in conjunction with the already in-place preventive techniques. Therefore, in this research we explore different strategies to build a Streambased Fraud Detection solution, using advanced Dat a Mining Algorithms and Statistical Analysis, and show how they lead to increased accuracy in the detection of fraud by at least 78% in our reference dataset. We also discuss how a combination of these strategies can be embedded in a Stream-based application to detect fraud in real-time.From this perspective, our experiments lead to an average processing time of 111,702ms per transaction, while strategies to further improve the performance are discussed. Keywords: Fraud Detection, Stream Computing, Real-Time Analysis, Fraud, Data Mining, Retail Banking Industry, Data Preprocessing, Data Classi? cation, Behavior-based Models, Supervised Analysis, Semi-supervised Analysis Sammanfattning Privatbankerna har drabbats hart av bedragerier de senaste aren. Bedragare har lyckats kringga forskning och tillgangliga system och lura bankerna och deras kunder.Darfor vill vi infora en ny, polyvalent strommande datorteknik (Stream Computing) for att upptacka bedragerier. Vi tror att denna struktur kommer att stimulera forskningen, och framfor allt fa organisationerna att investera i analytisk och statistisk bedragerisparning som kan anvandas tillsammans med be? ntlig forebyggande teknik. Vi undersoker i var forskning olika strategier for att skapa en strommande losning som utnyttjar avancerade algoritmer for datautvinning och statistisk analys for att upptacka bedragerier, och visar att dessa okar traffsakerheten for att upptacka bedragerier med minst 78% i var referensbas.Vi diskuterar aven hur en kombination av dessa strategier kan baddas in i en strommande applikation for att upptacka bedragerier i realtid. Vara forsok ger en genomsnittlig bearbetningstid pa 111,702ms per transaktion, samtidigt som olika strategier for att fortsatta forbattra resultaten diskuteras. Acknowledgments â€Å"Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone† Gladys Bronwyn Stern When I wrote the ? rst words in this report I think I had no idea what a Master Thesis is about!I can’t blame myself though since I never wrote one before, but if you ask me now to describe this experience I would say that it’s like a road trip: you set yourself a destination, you have a loyal crew that is always there for you, a roadmap, supporters on the side and then the journey begins. Within the latter, you face setbacks with the help of others, you share knowledge, you meet new people and most importantly you get to know them†¦ This journey would not have been possible without the support, camaraderie and guidance of many friends, colleagues and my family.For all these reasons, I couldn’t let the journey end without expressing my gratitude to each and everyone of them. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Philippe Spaas, who made it possible for me to work in this project under his supervision and in collaboration with IBM. It was a privilege to work alongside with him and a unique learning opportunity for me! I am indebted for his precious guidance and for the time dedicated not only in helping me understand how a research paper should be formulated, but also in reviewing the latter.Thank you! I am very thankful as well to Tybra Arthur, who graciously accepted me in her team and supported my internship, Jean de Canniere who accepted to be my Manager and without whom I wouldn’t have had this opportunity. In this line of thought, I am also grateful to Hans Van Mingroot who helped me secure this project in its negotiation phase. All three were key elements, and their support and guidance throughout the research were important to me and very much appreciated.I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Mihhail Matskin at KTH – the Royal Institute of Technology – for having accepted this Master Thesis and for being my examiner. His insights and help were invaluable to achieve more sound end results and put together this ? nal report! In addition, I would like to ext end my personal thanks to my Erasmus Coordinator, Anna Hellberg Gustafsson, for her support, kindness and dedication for the duration of the research which was key to the organization of the latter.She is, for me, the best coordinator I have met and heard about! I would probably not have taken the appropriate steps to have this opportunity within IBM if it weren’t for the initial support and guidance of Karl De Backer, Anika Hallier, Anton Wilsens and last but not least Parmjeet Kaur Gurmeet. I truly value their follow-up both on the research and on my experience! On a special note I would like to thank Parmjeet for having been always a good mentor to me and for her support and trust ever since the Extreme Blue internship.I want to thank each IBMer with whom I came in contact with in the Financial Services Sector Department for welcoming me into their working environment and for making my stay very enjoyable. In addition to the aforementioned IBMers, among many others and in no speci? c order I would like to thank Daniel Pauwels, Patrick Taymans, Hedwige Meunier, Gauthier de Villenfagne, Michel Van Der Poorten, Kjell Fastre, Annie Magnus, Wouter Denayer, Patrick Antonis, Sara Ramakers, Marc Ledeganck, Joel Van Rossem and Stephane Massonet. It was a real pleasure to share the open space and, more importantly, to meet them!Dan Gutfreund at IBM Haifa was a key element in the development of this thesis. I am very thankful for the discussions we had about Fraud Detection and for his advice in the different phases that compose this research. In addition, I would like to extend my thanks to Jean-Luc Collet at IBM La Gaude for his valuable help in obtaining a stable virtual machine with InfoSphere Streams. I am thankful to Professor Gianluca Bontempi and Liran Lerman at Universite Libre de Bruxelles for ? nding the time to discuss about Fraud Detection and Data Mining techniques.Their insights were vital for the development of the prototype and the overall rese arch. On the same vein, I would like to thank Chris Howard at IBM Dublin for his help in understanding Stream Computing and InfoSphere Streams. His guidance was crucial for a timely comprehension of the ? eld without which I wouldn’t have been able to develop the prototype. I want to thank Mike Koranda and John Thorson at IBM Rochester for their help in understanding the integration of Data Mining and Stream Computing and how to achieve the latter in a more ef? cient manner.I really appreciated their help with the prototype, especially when atypical errors occurred to more quickly detect the source of the problem. I am also thankful to IBM, as a company, for providing me the opportunity and necessary facilities to conduct my thesis project, as well as to KTH, as university, for having allowed me to take on this experience. I want to take this opportunity to thank my friend, Thomas Heselmans, for having been there ever since the beginning of the research despite my busy agenda . His support and concern were vital in times of great stress and trouble, thank you for your friendship!The same applies to Stephane Fernandes Medeiros, a great friend of mine who was always there for me and followed my work very closely. In addition, I am thankful to two of my greatest friends, Nicola Martins and Alberto Cecilio, for their friendship, for always supporting me and always having my back. Margarida Cesar is a very important person in my life, and I would like to express my gratitude for all the discussions and advice we shared, as well as for the support demonstrated ever since we met. I always take her advice very seriously and she has helped me cope with dif? ulties in more than one occasion, namely during the thesis, and for that I’m very thankful! I am also very grateful to my friend, Arminda Barata, for all the help she provided me in moving and adapting myself to Stockholm. Without her help and concern I wouldn’t have felt at home so easily, and I wouldn’t have liked Stockholm from the very ? rst day. I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank all my colleagues and friends in Stockholm for making these two years of study unforgettable, and for shaping the person I am today.Among so many others, I would like to thank in particular Sanja Jankolovska, Boshko Zerajik, Pedram Mobedi, Adrien Dulac, Filipe Rebello De Andrade, Pavel Podkopajev, Cuneyt Caliskan, Sina Molazem, Arezoo Ghannadian and Hooman Peiro. I couldn’t have made it through without all of them! Last but de? nitely not least, because I didn’t have the chance to formally thank my friends in my previous studies, I would like to take this opportunity to extend my thanks to them for all the good moments we spent together throughout our bachelor degree as well as today.In particular I would like to thank Miruna Valcu, Rukiye Akgun, Vladimir Svoboda, Antonio Paolillo, Tony Dusenge, Olivier Sputael, Aurelien Gillet, Mathieu Duchene, Br uno Cats, Nicolas Degroot and Juraj Grivna. I reserve a special thank you note to Mathieu Stennier, for both his friendship and support throughout my academic life, and for having shared with me what were the best moments I had in Brussels while at University!I would very much like to express myself in Portuguese to my family so that they can all more easily understand what I have to say, thank you for your understanding: Nao podia deixar de agradecer a toda a minha familia o apoio que demonstraram ao longo deste percurso academico que conhece hoje um novo capitulo. Gostaria de agradecer a todos sem excepcao por acreditarem em mim e nunca duvidarem das minhas capacidades. Obrigado por estarem sempre presentes apesar da distancia, obrigado por se preocuparem comigo e por fazerem com que eu saiba que poderei sempre contar com voces!Sou verdadeiramente um ser afortunado por poder escrever estas palavras†¦ Um obrigado especial a minha grande avo Olga por estar sempre disposta a sac ri? car-se por nos e por telefonar quase diariamente a perguntar se estou bem e se preciso de alguma coisa. Agradeco-lhe do fundo do coracao esse amor que tem pelos netos e que tanta forca transmite! Queria agradecer tambem aos meus primos Rui e Hugo, que sao para mim como os irmaos que eu nunca tive, a forca que me transmitem para seguir em frente face as adversidades da vida. Ambos ensinaram-me imenso durante toda a vida e sao uma fonte de inspiracao constante para mim!A admiracao que tenho por eles foi como um guia que me levou onde estou hoje†¦ Obrigado por acreditarem em mim para levar a bom porto este projecto e por terem estado sempre presentes a apoiar-me! Gostaria de deixar uma mensagem de apreco ao David, que e mais do que um primo para mim, e um melhor amigo, que sempre esteve presente e sempre se preocupou comigo durante a tese. Foram momentos, frases e situacoes da vida que ? zeram com que o David se tornasse na pessoa importante que e para mim e ao longo da tese a s suas mensagens de apoio foram sempre bem recebidas porque deram-me um alento enorme.Aproveito tambem para agradecer a minha querida tia Aida e ao meu estimado primo Xico pela preocupacao que tem sempre comigo e por serem uma fonte de inspiracao para mim. Desejo tambem aproveitar esta oportunidade para agradecer a Nandinha e Jorginho todo o apoio que me deram nao so durante estes 6 longos meses mas desde os meus primeiros passos. Sao como uns segundos pais para mim cujo apoio ao longo deste curso e capitulo da minha vida foi primordial. Agradeco, do fundo do coracao, o facto de me tratarem como se fosse um ? lho, por me guiarem e sempre ajudarem! Tenho ainda um lugar especial reservado para o meu tio Antonio.Um tio que admiro muito, que sempre me quis bem e cujo dom da palavra move montanhas! O seu conselho e para mim uma maisvalia, e agradeco todo o seu apoio e ajuda durante esta investigacao e sobretudo por me guiar quando nao ha estrelas no ceu. Aproveito para vos deixar a todos um pedido de desculpa por nao estar presente como gostaria, e agradeco o facto de que apesar de tudo voces estejam todos de pe ? rme atras de mim! Sem o vosso apoio nunca teria feito metade do que ? z! Costuma-se guardar o melhor para o ? m, e por isso nao podia deixar de agradecer aos meus pais tudo o que ? eram e fazem por mim! A lingua de Camoes e escassa para que eu consiga descrever o quao grato estou†¦ Dedico-vos esta tese, por sempre me terem dado todo o amor, carinho, e ajuda necessaria para ter uma vida feliz e de sucesso. Deixo aqui um grande e sentido obrigado por terem estado sempre presentes quando mais precisava, por me terem sempre apoiado a alcancar os meus objectivos, por me terem ensinado a viver, a amar, a partilhar e a ser a pessoa que sou hoje. Obrigado! Em particular gostaria de agradecer ao meu pai a compreensao que teve comigo durante este periodo mais ocupado.Agradecer-lhe a ajuda em conseguir por um meio termo as coisas e a olhar para elas de outro pr isma. Agradeco tambem a calma que me transmitiu e transmite, e o apaziguamento que me ensinou a ter face as adversidades da vida. Sem estas licoes de vida, que guardarei sempre comigo, sinto que a tese nao teria sido bem sucedida e eu nunca teria alcancado tudo o que alcancei! A minha mae, agradeco†¦ por onde hei-de comecar? Pela ajuda diaria durante a tese para que os meus esforcos se concentrassem no trabalho? Pela inspiracao diaria de um espirito lutador que nao desmorona face as di? culdades e injusticas da vida?Agradeco por tudo isto e muito mais pois sem a sua ajuda diaria nao teria conseguido acabar a tese. A admiracao que tenho pela sua forca e coragem ? zeram com que eu tentasse seguir os mesmos passos e levaram-me a alcancar patamares que considerava inalcancaveis! A paciencia que teve durante todo o projecto, mas sobretudo no ? m, e de louvar, e sem o seu ombro amigo teria sido tudo muito mais complicado. Obrigado a todos por tudo! Thank you all for everything! Filip e Miguel Goncalves de Almeida Table of Contents 1 Introduction Part I: Setting the Scene 2 Retail Banking and The State of the Art in Detection and Prevention of Fraud 2. The Retail Banking Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 1. 1 A Short Walk Down Memory Lane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 1. 2 The Retail Banking IT Systems’ Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2 Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 1 Internet and E-Commerce Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 2. 2 Other Consumer Fraud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3 Current Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 1 Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 3. 2 Analytics and Statistical Fraud-Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Problem De? nition 3. 1 Weak Links in Currently Available Solutio ns . 3. 1. 1 Bank Card and Pin Code . . . . . . . . . 3. 1. 2 One-Time-Password or Card Reader . . 3. 1. 3 Biometrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 1. 4 Analytics and Statistical Fraud-Scoring 3. 2 Facts and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 2. 1 France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 2. 2 United Kingdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. 3 E-Commerce and Internet Banking . . . . . . . 3. 4 Mobile Banking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 3 3 3 4 6 6 12 12 13 14 15 15 16 17 18 18 19 19 19 20 21 22 22 23 23 23 24 24 25 25 28 28 29 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 31 31 31 32 32 33 34 Research Methodology 4. 1 Objective of the Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2 Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2. 1 FICO’s E-Commerce Transactions Dataset . 4. 2. 2 Personal Retail Bank Transacti ons . . . . . 4. 3 Data Analysis Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 3. 1 Partitioning of the Data . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 4 Instruments and Implementation Strategy . . . . . 4. 4. 1 InfoSphere Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 4. 2 SPSS Modeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 4. 3 MySQL Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part II: Behind the Curtains 5 Phase 0: Data Preprocessing 5. Getting to Know the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 1. 1 Attributes and their Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 1. 2 Attributes in the Retail Banking Industry and in FICO’s Dataset . . . . . . 5. 1. 3 Statistical Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 2 Data Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 2. 1 Dimensionality Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 2. 2 Supervised Merge and Transformat ion of Nominal and Categorical Data . 5. 3 5. 4 5. 5 5. 6 . 7 5. 8 Cleaning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 3. 1 Missing Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 3. 2 Noisy Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 4. 1 Transformation of Times and Dates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 4. 2 Transformation by Normalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sampling Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 5. 1 Clustering using K-Means Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 5. 2 Under-Sampling Based on Clustering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Preprocessing Data with Stream Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 6. 1 Receiving and Sending Streams of Transactions . . . . . . . . . . 5. 6. 2 Retrieving and Storing Data to a Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 6. 3 Data Preprocessing using SPSS Solution Publisher . . . . . . . . . 5. 6. 4 Data Preprocessing using a Non-Generic C++ Primitive Operator Rule-Based Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. 7. 1 Streams with a Business Rules Management System . . . . . . . . Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 36 36 37 37 37 39 40 41 42 42 43 45 45 46 48 49 50 51 51 52 53 53 54 55 56 57 57 58 60 60 61 62 62 63 63 66 71 71 73 76 77 6 Phase I: Data Classi? cation 6. 1 Supervised Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 1. 1 Ensemble-Based Classi? er . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 2 Classi? cation Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 2. 1 Support V ector Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 2. 2 Bayesian Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 2. 3 K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) . . . . . . . . . . 6. 2. 4 C5. 0 Decision Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 3 Classi? cation using the Data Mining Toolkit . . . . 6. 3. 1 Weaknesses of the Approach . . . . . . . . . . 6. 4 Classi? cation using SPSS Modeler Solution Publisher 6. 4. 1 Implementation Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. 5 Model Retraining Architecture: High Level Overview 6. 6 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Phase II: Anomaly Detection and Stream Analysis 7. 1 Data Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. 2 Bank Customers Aggregation Strategy . . . . . . . . 7. 3 Anomaly Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. 3. 1 Techniques for Anomaly Detection . . . . . . 7. 3. 2 Mahalanobis Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. 4 Stream Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. 4. 1 Window-Based Operators . . . . . . . . . . . 7. 4. 2 Window-Based Anomaly Detection Strategy 7. 5 Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part III: Critical Review 8 Overall Evaluation 8. 1 Performance Measurement Techniques . . . . . . . . . 8. 1. 1 Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 1. 2 Accuracy Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 2 Data Preprocessing and Business Rules Analysis . . . 8. 3 Data Classi? cation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 3. 1 Un-preprocessed Classi? er Analysis . . . . . . 8. . 2 Preprocessed Un-Sampled Classi? er Analysis 8. 3. 3 Preprocessed Sampled Classi? er Analysis . . . 8. 3. 4 Ensemble-Based Classi? er Analysis . . . . . . 8. 4 Anomaly Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 5 Overall Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 6 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 6. 1 Extend Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. 6. 2 eXtreme Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 78 78 79 80 80 81 83 84 87 88 89 90 91 92 i 8. 7 8. 6. 3 Architecture and Data Mining Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Final Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 94 95 i vi 9 Conclusion Appendix A Supporing Figures Glossary List of Figures Figure 1. 1 Figure 2. 1 Figure 2. 2 Figure 2. 3 Figure 2. 4 Figure 2. 5 Figure 2. 6 Figure 2. 7 Figure 2. 8 Figure 2. 9 Figure 3. 1 Figure 3. 2 Figure 3. 3 Figure 3. 4 Figure 3. 5 Figure 3. 6 Figure 3. 7 Figure 3. 8 Figure 4. 1 Figure 4. 2 Figure 4. 3 Figure 4. 4 Figure 4. 5 Figure 4. 6 Figure 4. 7 Figure 5. 1 Figure 5. 2 Figure 5. 3 Figure 5. 4 Figure 5. 5 Figure 5. 6 Figure 5. 7 Figure 5. 8 Figure 5. 9 Figure 5. 10 Figure 5. 11 Figure 5. 12 Figure 5. 13 Figure 5. 14 Figure 5. 15 Figure 6. Figure 6. 2 Figure 6. 3 Figure 6. 4 Figure 6. 5 Lost in Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As-Is Banking IT Architecture . . . . . . . . . . Hype Cycle for Application Architecture, 2009 To-Be Banking IT Reference Architecture . . . . MitB Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Possible Paypal website (1) . . . . . . . . . . . Possible Paypal website (2) . . . . . . . . . . . Keyboard State Table method . . . . . . . . . . Windows Keyboard Hook method . . . . . . . Kernel-Based Keyboard Filter Driver met hod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 5 5 5 8 10 10 11 11 11 16 16 17 20 20 20 21 21 24 25 26 26 27 28 29 30 32 32 33 34 35 35 36 37 40 40 42 45 46 48 50 51 52 53 54 Components of the Chip and Pin Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . Attack to Card Illustrated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One-Time-Password Hacking Material and Architecture . Number of European Internet Users and Online Purchasers Forecast: US Online Retail Forecast, 2010 to 2015 . . . . . . . Web Growth has Outpaced Non-Web Growth for Years . . . US Mobile Bankers, 2008-2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . US Mobile Banking Adoption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CRoss-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining . . . . . . . . . Streams Programming Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . â€Å"Straight-through† processing of messages with optional storage. Backup and Fail-Over System for Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiple-Machines Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analytical and Business In telligent Platforms Compared . . . . . Global Flow of Events: Stream-Based Fraud Detection Solution . Overall SPSS Modeler Stream for the Of? ine Data Preprocessing Phase Frequency of Transactions per Hour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Amount Transferred per Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Feature Selection in SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Preparation Preprocessing Phase in SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SPSS Stream CHAID Tree Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHAID Tree for Data Reduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Filtering Null Values with SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cyclic Values of Attribute hour1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . K-Means Modeling in SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Clustering with K-Means in SPSS Modeler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stream-based Application: Data Preprocessing and Rule-Based Engine Stream-based Application: Data Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stream-based Application: Rule-Based Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interaction Between a BRMS and a Stream-based Application . . . . . Classi? cation in Stream-Based Application .Ensemble-Based Classi? er . . . . . . . . . . . Classi? cation in SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Support Vector Machines (SVMs) Illustrated Example of a Bayesian Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Figure 6. 6 Figure 6. 7 Figure 6. 8 Figure 7. 1 Figure 7. 2 Figure 7. 3 Figure 7. 4 Figure 7. 5 Figure 7. 6 Figure 7. 7 Figure 7. 8 Figure 7. 9 Figure 7. 10 Figure 7. 11 Figure 7. 12 Figure 7. 13 Figure 8. 1 Figure 8. 2 Figure 8. 3 Figure 8. 4 Figure 8. 5 Figure 8. 6 Figure 8. 7 Figure 8. 8 Figure 8. Figure A. 1 Figure A. 2 Figure A. 3 Figure A. 4 Figure A. 5 Figure A. 6 K-Nearest Neighbors Illustrated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Section of C5. 0 Decision Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SPSS C&DS: Classi? er Retraining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anomaly Detection Stream-based Application . . . . . . . . . . . . Aggregate Bank Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Learning a classi? er model for the normal class of transactions . . Transaction not belonging to a cluster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Transactions far from the clusters’ center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mahalanobis Distance Illustrated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mahalanobis Distance: Stream-based Application . . . . . . . . . . Window Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tumbling Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sliding Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Partitioned Keyword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Account average expenses and frequency of transactions in 3 days Window-Based Analysis: Stream-based Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 55 60 61 63 64 65 65 66 67 71 71 72 73 73 74 78 79 84 86 88 89 92 92 94 ii iii iii iv iv v Benchmarking Stream-based Application: Concept for Each Processing Step . . Confusion Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comparison between Un-Preprocessed and Preprocessed Data: Accuracy Levels Comparison between Sampled Datasets: Accuracy Levels (TP/FP) . . . . . . . Stream Analysis: Debited Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overall View of the Solution: Accuracy Levels (TP/FP/FN) . . . . . . . . . . . . Overall St ructure of the Financial Services Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In-Memory Database with InfoSphere Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stream-Based Application: a Flexible and Multifaceted Architecture . . . . . . . Stream-based Application: Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Time per Transaction for each of the Data Preprocessing Approaches . . . . . . . Time per Transaction for Preprocessing the Data and Examine the Business Rules . Metrics Data Classi? cation Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anomaly Detection Time per Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fraud Detection: Time per Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . List of Tables Table 3. 1 Table 5. 1 Table 5. 2 Table 6. 1 Table 7. 1 Table 8. 1 Table 8. 2 Table 8. 3 Table 8. 4 Table 8. 5 Table 8. 6 Table 8. 7 Table 8. 8 National fraud in France categorized by transaction type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Communalities PCA/Factor Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steps for Under-Sampling Based on Clustering (SBC) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Supported Mining Algorithms: Data Mining Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hardware Speci? cation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Individual Classi? er Accuracy Levels – Un-Preprocessed Training Set . . . . . Individual Classi? er Accuracy Levels – Un-Sampled Preprocessed Training Set Multiple Sampling Ratios Analyzed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiple Sampling Ratios Analyzed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ensemble-Based Classi? r: Balanced . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ensemble-Based Classi? er: Maximum Fraud Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ensemble-Based Classi? er with Mahalanobis: Balanced Model Combination . Ensemble-Based Classi? er with Mahalanobis: Maximizing Fraud Detectio n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 34 41 56 77 81 83 85 85 87 87 89 89 List of Algorithms Algorithm 1 Algorithm 2 Algorithm 3 Algorithm 4 Algorithm 5 Algorithm 6 Algorithm 7 Algorithm 8 Algorithm 9 Algorithm 10 Algorithm 11 Algorithm 12 Algorithm 13 Algorithm 14 InputSource: Receive Incomming Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ODBCEnrich: Enrich an Incomming Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Non-Generic C++ Primitive Operator: Manual Preprocessing . . . . . . . . . Preprocessing: Manual Preprocessing of Incoming Transactions . . . . . . . Functor: Split Stream for Preprocessing and Rule-Based Engine . . . . . . . . Join: Append Business Rules to Preprocessed Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . Join: Append Business Rules to Preprocessed Transaction . . . . . . . . . . . Data Mining Toolkit Operator: Decision Tree C5. 0 Classi? er . . . . . . . . . . Non-Generic C++ Primitive Operator: Supervised Analysis . . . . . . . . . . Classi? cationEnsembl e: Constructor() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classi? cation Ensemble: process(Tuple & tp, uint32_t port) . . . . . . . . . . Variance-Covariance Inverse Matrix used in the Mahalanobis Distance . . . Individual Account Anomaly Detection Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Voting Protocol: Mahalanobis Distance, Window-Based and Classi? er Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 44 45 46 47 47 47 56 58 58 59 68 75 75 Chapter 1 Introduction â€Å"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step† Lao Tzu â€Å"If you work on fraud detection, you have a job for life†. These were the words used by Professor David J.Hand1 in one of his talks to synthesize the vast research ? eld that is Fraud Detection. Indeed, this ? eld consists of multiple domains, and is continually evolving through time with new strategies and algorithms to counter the constantly changing tactics employed by fraudsters2 . In this line of thought, currently available solutions ha ve been unable to control or mitigate the everincreasing fraud-related losses. Although thorough research has been done, only a small number of studies have led to actual Fraud Detection systems [27], and the focus is typically on novel algorithms aiming at increasing the accuracy levels.To this end, we want to look at the problem from a different angle, and focus on the foundations for a real-time and multi-purpose solution, based on a technology known as Stream Computing, able to encompass these algorithms while creating the possibilities for further research. We subdivide our study in three main parts. We begin with an overall understanding of the topic being discussed by de? ning the research environment, its problems and presenting the solutions currently available. In addition, we conclude this ? rst part by both specifying the structure, and outlining the objective of the research.The second part explores the overall course of action to bring about a Stream-based Fraud Detect ion solution. From this perspective, we discuss different strategies previously researched in Data Preprocessing, Data Classi? cation and Behavior-based Analysis, and tackle their combination and integration in a Stream-based application. Last but not least, we review the overall solution proposed, and examine the possibilities offered by the latter for further research in the ? eld of Fraud Detection in the Retail Banking Industry. Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the Imperial College of London, and one of the leading researchers in the ? eld of Fraud Detection – http://www3. imperial. ac. uk/people/d. j. hand – link to the presentation: http://videolectures. net/mmdss07_hand_stf/ 2 a person intended to deceive others (i. e. one who commits fraud) [de? ned in the Glossary] 1 Part I: Setting the Scene â€Å"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together† Vincent van Gogh Fraud Detection in itself is interlinked with numerous ? lds of study, and before the play’s main action, we want to set the stage. In order to avoid getting off track and allowing you to better understand the scope, contents, choices made, and requirements of the research, we divided this act in three scenes. In the ? rst, we introduce the main actors – namely banks, bank customers and fraudsters. In addition, we also present the current situation in the Detection and Prevention of Fraud in banks, describing the techniques being used both to counter and to commit fraudulent transactions. The second scene introduces the overall problem of fraud in the Banking Sector.It identi? es the weaknesses of the latest solutions, and quanti? es fraud losses as accurately as possible in some European countries and this based on the most recent data. We then take a step further and comment on new trends, and predict possible risks banks might incur from them. Before the end of the act, we introdu ce the two main parts of the play, as well as how we intend to approach the problem. More precisely, we provide some speci? cs regarding the research conducted, the tools used and the plan followed to reach our conclusions. Figure 1. : Lost in Translation 2 Chapter 2 Retail Banking and The State of the Art in Detection and Prevention of Fraud â€Å"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception† Aldous Huxley Businessmen and politicians, before sealing deals or taking political decisions, are known to go through a phase of reconnaissance – the military term for exploring enemy or unknown territory. Just as it is important to them, so it is for you when you are about to dive into the speci? cs of a real-time fraud detection solution.In this line of thought, it is important to grasp the context of the research to better understand the concepts discussed. To do so, we start this chapter with an overall view of the Retail Ba nking Industry, to understand both its services and IT architecture (Section 2. 1); we continue with a de? nition of fraud together with a description of the different fraud types that affect banks and how they operate (Section 2. 2); lastly, we give an overview of some of the current solutions available (Section 2. 3). 2. 1 The Retail Banking Industry To describe the banking industry’s evolution that started earlier than 2000 B.C. [91], deserves almost a research paper on its own. For this reason, and because we don’t want to divert from the topic, we start by solely providing a simple and brief resume about the origins of the banking industry (Section 2. 1. 1). The latter is an interesting talking point that not only allows you to understand how it all started, but also to perceive the challenge of keeping a bank pro? table. Additionally, it is a good introduction to understand a more technical description of the IT architecture behind the banking services (Section 2 . 1. 2). 2. 1. 1 A Short Walk Down Memory LaneIt all started with barter back in the time of Dravidian India, passing through Doric Greece to preRoman Italy, when a cow or an ox was the standard medium of exchange. [91] However, given the dif? culty of trading fairly, evaluating different goods with the same standards, and ? nding suitable goods for both parties involved, the invention of â€Å"money† inevitably developed. Indeed, the origin of the word money is pecunia in Latin, which comes from pecus, meaning cattle. Through time, money evolved in the different civilizations and became not only a symbol but also a key factor in trading.Together with the development of the art of casting, the different mediums of exchange evolved gradually from random precious metals to what we now know as currency. This developments made our forefathers the proponents of the ? rst banks for reasons that are still of applicability in today’s banking system. The code of Hammurabi in th e early 2000 B. C. stated â€Å"If a man gives to another silver, gold or anything else to safeguard, whatsoever he gives he shall show to witnesses, and he shall arrange the contracts before he makes the deposits. [91] It is therefore clear that the Babylonians already placed back in their time their valuable possessions in a safe place, guarded by a trusted man. 3 Nevertheless, the real inspiration for the banking system as we know it today came from the Greeks. Unlike the Babylonians, the Greeks didn’t have a government and therefore the country was divided into independent states that were constantly either at war or in a state of unrest. [91] In these turbulent times, they found Temples to be the only safe place able to survive the test of wartime.They were seen as safe deposit vaults, marking the beginning of the functions of our current banks. Indeed, records show that the Temples not only kept money safe but also lent the funds at a certain interest rate. In addition , even though safeguarding the money started as a service free of charge, it soon turned into a business where small commissions were applied. The banking industry continued to evolve through time, from the commercial development of the Jews; passing by the establishment of the Bank of St.George, the Bank of the Medici and the Bank of England, to the rise of the Rothschilds, and the development of banking in the land of the Vikings. [91] At this moment in time, a major bank is a combination of a dozen of businesses, such as corporate, investment and small business banking, wealth management, capital markets. One among these is the retail banking industry. [46] The retail banking industry is characterized by a particularly large number of customers and bank accounts in comparison to any other banking business, which results in a much higher number of transactions, services and products.In addition, it relies more and more on technology due to the levels of cooperation between banks, retailers, businesses, customers leading to an ever-increasing amount of information processing requirements. In a nutshell, today’s banks follow the same principle described earlier by borrowing from clients in surplus and lending to those in de? cit. This triangulation is a win-win situation for the bank and its customers: the bank makes revenue from the net interest income, which is the difference between what it pays to the lending customer and what it receives from the borrower.Nevertheless, the bank can’t lend all the deposits and needs to guarantee that a certain percentage is kept aside to satisfy customer withdraws and requirements. [92] Even though the situation varies from bank to bank, it is noteworthy to mention that â€Å"more than half of a retail bank’s revenue, perhaps three-quarters, comes from this intermediation role in the form of net interest income†. [46] To conclude, in today’s world, and after years of evolution, retail ban ks provide you with a multitude of services for which they charge fees, mainly to cover the maintenance of the infrastructure and the bank’s structure.These added up together account between 15% to 35% of the net interest income. [46] Among the services you can ? nd payment services, phone banking, money transfer, ATMs1 , online banking, advisory services, investment and taxation services, mobile banking and many more. How does a bank ef? ciently govern, offer and maintain all these services? 2. 1. 2 The Retail Banking IT Systems’ Architecture Just as banking services evolved through time so did the overall back-end architecture allowing a bank to provide all the aforementioned services. This evolution was especially prominent after the unveiling by Barclays Bank f the ? rst ATM machine in 19672 : from that moment on, banks started investing heavily in computerized systems with the goal of automating manual processes in an effort to improve its services, overall status in the market and cut costs. From this perspective, the IT systems of banks matured from the creation of payment systems together with the launch of the international SWIFT network3 in the 70s, to today’s core banking system: a general architecture that supports all the channels and services of a bank and where each one of them is digitalized.An overview of such general architecture is illustrated in Figure 2. 1 [77]. 1 acronym for Automated Teller Machine, a machine that automatically provides cash and performs other banking services on insertion of a special card by the account holder [de? ned in the Glossary] 2 http://www. personal. barclays. co. uk/PFS/A/Content/Files/barclays_events. pdf 3 Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a member-owned cooperative that operates a worldwide standardised ? nancial messaging network through which the ? nancial world conducts its business operations http://www. wift. com 4 This architecture was in plac e in many banks some years ago, and still is in some cases, but even though it provides the clients with all the necessary banking tools, it had certain drawbacks that became visible through the modernization and improvement of services. As it is described by both Microsoft [82] and IBM [77]: the as-is architecture has no true enterprise view of a customer because information is duplicated, which leads to inconsistent customer services and promotions across channels; when adding new or changing current products, it takes time to bring Figure 2. : As-Is Banking IT Architecture (source [77]) them to the market and a signi? cant amount of changes to the core system code. This leads to a dif? culty in responding quickly to new challenges and evolving regulatory pressures. Faced with the aforementioned problems, banks had the need to change towards a more ? exible and ef? cient architecture that would allow them to comply with the ever-changing needs of the clients and of the technology. With this n mind, the major players in core banking have switched to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) with the intended goal of improving growth, reducing costs, reducing operational risks, and improving customer experience. [69] [94] [83] [77] [82] As reported by Forrester in a survey in 2007 [82], out of 50 European banks, 53 percent declared they were already replacing their core system while 27 percent were planning to do so and 9 percent had already completed a major transition. The same survey assessed that 56 percent of the banks already used SOA and 31 percent were planning to.Additionally, in Gartner’s 2009 report (Figure 2. 2 [28]), supports this strategy and believed that SOA-based architectures was increasingly being adopted and would be widely accepted in a time frame of 2 to 5 years. In the latest update (2011th Edition [29]), SOA is entering the Plateau of Productivity, which indiFigure 2. 2: Hype Cycle for Application Architecture, 2009 cates that the ma instream adoption is starting to take off. (source [28]) With this transition to an agile banking platform with a more ? exible product de? ition built on SOA principles, banks expect to gradually simplify their business and become more ef? cient in the long term. Indeed, the aforementioned platform which is illustrated in Figure 2. 3, is meant to provide the banks with faster and easier ways to update the system and comply with changing industry regulations and conditions. Additionally, by having a holistic view of the customer-relevant data across systems, a bank is able to better focus and analyze it with the goal to improve its customers experience by investing in more ef? cient and ? xible customer-centric offerings. Lastly, the architecture allows for integrated customer analytics and insight capabilities. In this line of thought, a stream-based real-time fraud detection solution would be easy to integrate in such an architecture, allowing the bank, as we will see later on, to broaden its services, data analysis capabilities and detect fraud in realtime. Figure 2. 3: To-Be Banking IT Reference Architecture (source [77]) 5 2. 2 Fraud When one wants to get something from others illegally he can do it in two ways: force or trick them into doing so. The ? st is better known as robbery and is usually more violent and noticeable; the second is known as fraud, which is more discrete and therefore preferred by fraudsters. [76] From this we can understand that fraud includes a wide variety of acts characterized by the intent to deceive or to obtain an unearned bene? t. [30] Many audit-related agencies provide distinct insights into the de? nition of fraud that can be brie? y summarized in this way: De? nition 1. Fraud consists of an illegal act (the intentional wrongdoing), the concealment of this act (often only hidden via simple means), and the deriving of a bene? (converting the gains to cash or other valuable commodity) [30] Given this de? nition, we can furt her classify the known types of fraud by victim, perpetrator and scheme [76]: †¢ Employee Embezzlement – Employees deceive their employers by taking company assets either directly or indirectly. The ? rst occurs without the participation of a third party and is characterized by an employee who steals company assets directly (e. g. cash, inventory, tools, etc. ). In the second, the stolen assets ? ow from the company to the perpetrator through a third party.Indeed, indirect fraud happens usually when an employee accepts bribes to allow for lower sales or higher purchases prices, or any other dishonest action towards the company. †¢ Vendor Fraud – This type of fraud usually happens when a seller overcharges its products; ships lower quality goods; or doesn’t ship any products to the buyer even though it received the corresponding payment. Vendor fraud happens more frequently with government contracts and usually becomes public when discovered, being one of the most common in the United States. Customer Fraud – Customer fraud takes place when a customer doesn’t pay for the products he purchased, pays too little, gets something for nothing or gets too much for the price. All these situations occur through deception. †¢ Management Fraud – Management fraud, also known as ? nancial statement fraud, is committed by top management who deceptively manipulate ? nancial statements. The interest behind these actions is usually to hide the real economic situation of a company by making it look healthier than it actually is.However, for the purpose of this research, and given the fact that we are focusing on fraud perpetrated in the retail banking industry, we will mainly focus on every possible bank transaction that a customer can perform. The research will be based in debit, online banking – namely electronic bill payment and giro transfers – and debit plastic card transactions. Fraud that can be perpet rated against these transactions falls within the category known as consumer fraud. Additionally, the latter can be sub-categorized in Internet and e-commerce fraud and other (non-)internet related fraud that we will now describe in more detail. . 2. 1 Internet and E-Commerce Fraud The Internet†¦ a technology that was unknown to many of us 25 years ago and is used now by billions of people either at home, work or on-the-go. We can ? nd webpages from business home pages, to informational wikis, passing through social networking sites; ? les that take the form of text, audio or video; and a multitude of services and web applications. It took just 3 years for the Internet to reach over 90 million people while the television and the radio took respectively 15 and 35 years to reach 60 million people! 76] This is how fast the medium through which e-commerce fraud takes place has evolved. This informational and technological revolution led to new ways for fraud to be perpetrated while techniques to avoid it have dif? culties to keep up with the pace. Today, businesses depend on the Internet to perform paperless transactions and exchange information between them: they mostly use e-business connections, virtual private networks (VPNs1 ), and other specialized connections. 76] This type of commerce is known as e-commerce, or electronic commerce, because it takes place over electronic systems. Therefore, even if you think you are not using the Internet, any operation you make at a local branch, any withdraw you do from an ATM or any purchase you make at a local store with your bank card, a Network transaction takes place. 1 it’s a method employing encryption to provide secure access to a remote computer over the Internet [de? ned in the Glossary] 6Since most businesses rely on Network-based transactions and, as we will describe later on, Internet users use the network more and more frequently to buy products or services, the North American Securities Administ rators Association (NASAA) considers that Internet fraud has become a booming business. [76] With this in mind, there are three standpoints that need to be taken into consideration when describing in more details the risks involved in this category that undermine banks and more importantly their customers: risks lying inside and/or outside the organization.Risks Inside Banks and Other Organizations The main risks come from within the bank. [76] Indeed, a perpetrator with inside access has knowledge regarding the environment, the security mechanisms and how to bypass them. Additionally, any employee with access to the organization’s network has automatically bypassed ? rewalls and security checks making it easier to in? ltrate systems, steal information or data and cause damage to the bank. From this perspective, the most common example is the superuser access that most IT-related employees (e. g. rogrammers, technical support, network administrators or project managers) have within the company’s infrastructure and database systems. [76] In one survey, â€Å"more than a third of network administrators admitted to snooping into human resource records, layoff lists, and customer databases†. [76] A related survey found that â€Å"88 percent of administrators would take sensitive data if they were ? red, and 33 percent said they would take company password lists†. [76] Even if a perpetrator does not have personal access to the targeted system and information, there are techniques that he can use to get at them indirectly, i. . via a person of interest: – Snif? ng, also known as Eavesdropping: Snif? ng is the logging, ? ltering, and viewing of information that passes along a network connection. Applications are easily and available for free on the Internet, Wireshark1 and tcpdump2 that allow network administrators to troubleshoot any possible problem in the network. Nevertheless, these applications can as easily be used by hackers to gather information from unencrypted communications. 76] A good example is the usage of unencrypted e-mail access protocols like Post Of? ce Protocol 3 (POP3) or the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) instead of other more secured ones. Since e-mail clients check messages every couple of minutes, hackers have numerous opportunities to intercept personal information. [76] A user could in addition encrypt the body of the email by using Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) or OpenPGP in order to avoid that sensitive information passes through the network in plain text.Even though security experts have successfully managed to encrypt emails, the reason behind this lack of security is that they have failed to take into consideration the needs of the end-user – namely, â€Å"the ability to occasionally encrypt an email without much trouble at all†. [113] – Wartrapping: Wartrapping happens when hackers set up free access points to the Internet t hrough their laptops in speci? c locations like airports or inside a company’s headquarters. Users, unaware that the wi? passes through a hacker’s computer, connect to the latter and navigate the Internet as if they had a secured connection.When logging their internet banking services and performing transactions, or simply access their emails, the hacker can see the bits and bytes of every communication passing through any laptop in the clear. In this line of thought, hackers can get caught in their own web as companies are also using what they call honeypot traps. The latter is an information system resource, like a computer, data, or a network site (e. g. wireless entry), whose purpose is not only to divert attackers and hackers away from critical resources, but also to serve as a tool to study their methods. 1] These systems are placed strategically so to look like part of the company’s internal infrastructure even though they are actually isolated and monito red by administrators of the organization. One of the most widely used tools is honeyd3 . [89] 1 2 3 http://www. wireshark. org/ http://www. tcpdump. org/ http://www. honeyd. org/ 7 Passwords are the Achille’s heel of many systems since its creation is left to the end user who keeps them simple and within his or her preferences and life experiences (e. g. birthdays, family names, favorite locations or brands).In addition, users tend to re-use the same password for different purposes in order to avoid having to remember different ones, which leads perpetrators to gain access to different services and accounts with a single password from the person. In addition, another source of threats are the laptops and mobile devices that many employees take with them outside the company’s protected environment. While in these unsecured contexts, the devices are exposed to viruses, spyware, and other threats that might compromise again the integrity of other organization’s sy stem once these computers are plugged in the network.Viruses, trojans and worms are able to enter the protected environment without having to go through ? rewalls and security checks, making it easier to in? ltrate key information systems and bypass defense mechanism. Risks Outside Banks and Other Organizations The Internet not only became a source of services to users and companies but also a rich medium for hackers to gain access to personal systems. Indeed, when performing attacks, hackers are relatively protected because they cross international boundaries – which puts them under a different jurisdiction than the victim of the attack – and are mostly anonymous – making tracking dif? ult. Therefore, the Internet became the defacto technological medium to perform attacks and there are numerous ways of doing so: – Trojan Horses: A trojan horse is a program designed to breach the security of a computer system and that has both a desirable and a hidden, us ually malicious, outcome. [86] These programs can be embedded in a bank user’s computer when he views or opens an infected email, visits or downloads a ? le from an unsecured website or even when visiting a legitimate website that has been infected by a trojan. [85] From this perspective, a good example is the man-in-the-browser (MitB) attack, represented in Figure 2. , which uses trojan horses to install extensions or plugins in the browser that are used to deceive a bank customer: Whenever a speci? c webpage is loaded, the Trojan will ? lter it based on a target list (usually online banking pages). The trojan extension waits until the user logs into his bank and starts to transfer money. When a transaction is performed, the plug-in extracts data from all the ? elds and modi? es the amount and recipient according to the hacker’s preferences through the document object model (DOM1 ) interface, and resubmits the form to the server.The latter will not be able to identify whether the values were written by the customer or not and performs the Figure 2. 4: MitB Operation (source2 ) transaction as requested. [85] – ATM Attack Techniques: An Automated Teller Machine (ATM), is a computerized device that allows customers of a ? nancial institution to perform most banking transactions and check their account status without the help of a clerk. The device identi? es the customers with the help of a plastic bank card, which contains a magnetic stripe with the customer’s information, together with a personal identi? ation number (PIN) code. [2] ATMs are attractive to fraudsters because they are a direct link to customers information and money, and there are security pitfalls with their current architecture [2]: the way data is encoded in the magnetic media makes it easily accessible if a hacker invests some money to buy the easyto-be-found equipment, and time to decode and duplicate the contents; in addition, with a four 1 An interface that let s software programs access and update the content, structure, and style of documents, including webpages [de? ed in the Glossary] 2 www. cronto. com, blog. cronto. com/index. php? title=2fa_is_dead 8 digit PIN, not only will one in every 10. 000 users have the same number but it also allows brute force attacks to discover the combination. Not to mention the possible physical attacks on ATMs which cannot be considered as fraud (see De? nition 1), there are a couple of ways fraudsters steal money from bank customers [2]: 1. Skimming Attack: skimming is the most popular approach in ATMs and consists in using devices named skimmers that capture the data from the magnetic strip.These devices can be plugged in an ATM’s factory-installed card reader and allows for download of all personal information stored on the card. In addition, to obtain the PIN code fraudsters use either shoulder-sur? ng and hidden video cameras, or distraction techniques while the customer uses the ATM. [2] S ometimes fraudsters take a step further and create their own fake teller machines to deceive bank customers; this is considered to be a spoo? ng attack that we will describe in more details below. [39] 2.Card Trapping: this tech